Idea to make outdoor dogfighting more interesting

I realize I refer to Tribes alot in this post, but I think it had some good gameplay dynamics, and I thought it would be grand if some of them could be adopted into the realm of 6DOF gameplay.

Tribes jetpack/spinfusor dynamic: -you run out of jetpack energy then you fall to the ground making you vulnerable to spinfusor blasts

Possible 6DOF equivalent: -you run out of aburn energy decreasing your acceleration and possibly speed as well, making you more vulnerable to 'remotely triggered spinfusor' blasts -what is that?! Just like a spinfusor but you can explode it remotely anytime before it hits the ground by pressing a trigger (yes this is a new weapon request as well!) -perhaps have cloak and aburn share the same energy forcing players to use it wisely -I have no idea how well this would work in practice, but I think it's worth experimenting with

Regarding aburn direction:

I still wish that the afterburners were omni-directional (as in Tribes) Aburn in any direction while looking-firing in any direction. Aburn straight toward your destination while facing/shooting your targets in whatever direction they may be in!

Quote from Scotthttp://forum.talongame.com/viewtopic.php?pid=1768"I did want a bit of a flight-simy feel and it made sense for the ships to be faster on the forward vector, I still wanted to encourage more circle-strafing dogfighting and less of the "boost past, turn and fire, repeat" pattern. So the AB is a bit weak by design."

But there are a ton of strafe-less outdoor flight sims out there, this is what makes Talon such a breath of fresh air! Omni-directional aburns I think will make dogfighting more freeing, and less of a series of linear joust runs, as you mentioned. 'Chorldess' NVT is a great idea that frees up facing/move directions, why not go all the way and do this with aburns as well? Perhaps make aburns a bit stronger, but when you're out juice you are vulnerable (perhaps cloak can share energy with aburn.)

Perhaps allow faster forward speeds (due to aerodynamics) but equal accelerations in all directions.Thanks for not having the quirks I never much cared for in Descent: the false roll into yaw, and pitch being halfspeed of yaw!

Re: Idea to make outdoor dogfighting more interesting

I think cloak and afterburner are already pretty well balanced -- you don't want to use afterburner while you're cloaked because AFAIK the noise and the jet trails will give you away. Having it use the same energy source wouldn't hurt the game, per se, but it would be redundant because the discouragement for doing both at once is already adequate. And I think if anyone knows how to use the cloak effectively it's me.

I can see you joined in february... have you managed to play a game against real opponents instead of bots? If not you might be surprised at how the dogfighting tends to work already, when you've got someone real to dogfight against.

Last edited by Splotchie (2014-09-18 03:07:14)

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Re: Idea to make outdoor dogfighting more interesting

I never suggested using cloak and aburns simultaneously. The reason I suggested them using the same energy source was to ensure they'd be used tacticfully, only in critical situations. If overused then you'd make yourself an easier target in situations when you need it the most. With aburns a target's trajectory can radically change quickly, but not when they're out of energy.

The remotely triggered missile (RTM for future references) idea is mostly for outdoor combat where you don't have surfaces near the target to explode missiles against. Generally speaking you're not going to get many direct hits with non-guided non-homing weapons. But with a RTM you can at least do some explosive damage with near misses. It still would be a challenge to explode it at the right time near the target, making depth perception from stereographic devices useful. Does Talon support stereographic devices like the Oculus rift and Gear VR?

I see too much jousting going on the outdoor portion of this video, which is probably due to forward-only aburns. I think omni-directional aburns will spice up dogfighting with more type of maneuvers being performed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7STQvCOescAre there any videos out there demonstration lots of outdoor strafing action by chance? A stronger emphasis on strafing will help differentiate the game from many other outdoor flying shooters out there.

Re: Idea to make outdoor dogfighting more interesting

Are there many?I think it would be best to just experience it yourself. There are a couple of dedicated servers back up now and I'm sure if you asked some of us would be up for a game. I certainly would, although for Killing Fields or the space level we'd need more than two players.

We live in a universe... it's distracting=========================================================beware of ounce